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Pielke Sr. on new Spencer and Braswell paper

“Pielke Sr. on new Spencer and Braswell paper” (2011/07/26). Who’d ‘a thunk that Roger Pielke (the dad who’s a grumpy scientist, not the son who’s just a grumpy economist) would, again, sing the praises of Dr. Roy Spencer’s latest paper proving, again, sort of, that there is no global warming? Anthony Watts is excited enough by this startling development to copy and paste Pielke Sr.’s insights.

Dr. Pielke Sr. intones that Dr. Spencer’s paper, On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance in Remote Sensing, “raises further questions on the robustness of multi-decadal global climate predictions”. Yes, it’s the final nail in the coffin of global warming alarmism! Again! This time, for real! Oh, they have to be smart questions? Oops. Remote Sensing, for their part, is a new journal that seems more interested in publication fees than ensuring the scientific credibility of their papers.

Not yet referenced by Anthony, there’s also an enthusiastic “so there!” article in Forbes magazine. Right-wing climate change denying Heartland Institute lobbyist James Taylor sings the praises of right-wing climate change denying scientist Dr. Spencer, also tightly associated with Heartland Institute, in a right-wing climate change denying magazine! It stirs the soul to see all the pistons firing together so smoothly but using “alarmist” in 15 times, in practically every sentence, shines the spotlight in a presumably unintended direction.

So, what about Dr. Spencer’s science? Do clouds really cause climate like Spencer keeps saying? Is the Earth really failing to warm up quite as much as alarmist scientists say it is? This is just a laugh-at-Anthony-Watts’-lies blog, so today I’ll simply point out some of the criticisms from around the web.

2011-09-07 Update: Well this hasn’t taken long. Spencer’s ‘final nail in the coffin of AGW’ has completely unravelled. Turns out his crayon version of atmospheric physics has in fact proven the validity of current “alarmist” climate theories and models! Thanks Roy. That’s what happens when you work backwards from a baseless conclusion and ignore logic. Thanks for wading through the stupid, Dr. Dessler (preprint here, watch a video summary here).

You can fool some of the people all of the time [That would be the denialist booble heads, – Ben], and all of the people some of the time [That would be the un-informed public, – Ben], but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. …Abraham Lincoln

The satellite record requires so many models to convert radiation to temperature. Spencer has had many attempts to get it right. Together with dying satellites (whose modelled temperatures do not match with new satellites) how can he deduce anything from his measurements with any certainty?

walt man

Posted Jul 31, 2011 at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Reply
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But how many times has the satellite record been adjusted (it’s all models, after all)

Some obviously due to satellites dying. But then why do the new satellite records match the old?

So one revision brought satellite data into line with earth based measurements and now magically Spencer’s models are accurate enough to state that CO2 has little effect.
I was hoping McIntyre could apply his critical unbiassed auditing skills to this document but I suppose that is not possible?

Playing curve fitting games and then declaring that they have disproven the entire AGW theory appears to have become the denialists’ favorite pastime. All the attention Spencer’s paper has drawn has led to another denialist paper with similar techniques (Loehle and Scafetta ’11), published in a similarly obscure journal which also seems mostly interested in publication fees, to fall out of the spotlight. It was featured on WUWT and Curry’s blog prior to the Spencer hubub.

Anyway, we’re publishing a post on this paper at Skeptical Science on Wednesday. Like Spencer, L&S used an extremely simple climate model (even simpler than Spencer) and played some curve fitting games with no regard for physical reality, then declared that their results proved that climate sensitivity to increasing CO2 is low.

[That would be Spencer’s July 30th Watts Up rant “Rise of the 1st Law Deniers“. This is the same scientist, also a creationist, who said “I view my job [to be]… to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government”, so I think he’s had a hard-core agenda for quite a while. – Ben]

All the people who hate computer models now love at least one – it’s very simple and very flawed but it says what they want it to say – at least when certain numbers are plugged in to make it say what they want it to say.

And all the people who hate NASA now love NASA, because they finally found someone who thinks that NASA data proves global warming is not happening – only no-one’s been game to tell NASA yet.

And suddenly clouds have decided to force the climate. Wonder why they didn’t start doing that hundreds of years ago. I suppose they were resting until recently, then woke up, had a confab and said – we’re going to force this global warming away. Clever things, clouds.